The Martial Unity

The S’rrigin stared at Rui; the sensors and surveillance instruments of his fleet all pointed towards Rui. The other aquadite Administrator was on guard, staring at Rui with his information dimension senses. The dessandrites also paid heightened attention to Rui in this state.

Everybody was waiting to see what would happen when Rui deactivated his Martialverse.

Rui simply smiled.

He didn’t deactivate his Martialverse at all.

Instead, he muted it to the greatest possible extent, reducing the rate of consumption of metaphysical stamina to a drip-feed rate. He infringed on reality to the barest minimum with his Martialverse, allowing it to last longer.

Of course, this was a very temporal solution, a flawed solution. It would not be possible to sustain this for long. And he would not be able to act as an Administrator during that period, for it would accelerate his disappearance.

But he acted like he was completely fine, simply smiling at the other parties.

Immediately, all three parties made a series of erroneous deductions about what was happening.

’He must have found a way to remove the limitations on metaphysical stamina! That must be the way he overcomes the price of the Verse! He never deactivates it!’

Of course, this was the wrong conclusion, but it couldn’t be helped that they would think that this was the logical solution to overcoming the price of Transcendence. He had set it up such that they had no other alternative to reach for. Indeed, they could only conclude that the Emperor of Water had found a way to break the shackles of metaphysical stamina.

In truth, even Rui didn’t think such a thing was possible. Metaphysical stamina, from what he had understood of it, was based entirely on information. It was the stamina of integrated information itself, or something that fundamental.

Of course, this was the wrong conclusion, but it couldn’t be helped that they would think that this was the logical solution to overcoming the price of Transcendence. He had set it up such that they had no other alternative to reach for. Indeed, they could only conclude that the Emperor of Water had found a way to break the shackles of metaphysical stamina.

In truth, even Rui didn’t think such a thing was possible. Metaphysical stamina, from what he had understood of it, was based entirely on information. It was the stamina of integrated information itself, or something that fundamental.

No amount of pumping his cells with energy or refreshing his brain would be able to stop it from leaking away. Not even the Martialverse could prevent it from depleting. He had already tried.

He was used to infinite stamina for all the other Realms, but even he had hit a hard limit with Transcendence. Not even copying his consciousness prevented it, which showed that it was informational in nature. Some trait that was non-fungible.

Still, he allowed the other parties to come to their own erroneous conclusions. This would have them chase after a wild goose chase, preventing them from coming into touch with the real solution.

As for whether they could replicate the real solution, Rui suspected that it was possible for the arakai to replicate it, but not the aquadites or the dessandrites. The arakai could replicate it because consciousness was a web of integrated information. It was within their specialty to create copies of it if they learned how to.

However, it was not that easy. The truth was that his solution was a solution that was built on top of power derived from every Realm at his disposal. The Martialverse alone was not enough. Although the Divine Mothers were extraordinary in their own right, they were much more limited outside of their Verses.

He suspected that only a handful of Divine Mothers would be capable of ever coming up with this solution on their own.

In comparison, Dwight was amazing for being able to replicate it quite easily, but his Verse was even more suited for this task than Rui’s, so he didn’t need Rui’s help after figuring out the basic principles of the solution.

”Alright then,” Rui remarked to the three parties, his attention returning to the present. ”Since I have humored your request and the deal is signed, I have concluded my business here. I must return to my civilization. Good doing business and war with all of you, and good luck to all of us.”

He didn’t bother waiting any longer, teleporting back to his ship before it rapidly took off from the star system. There were four Administrators remaining; if they wanted to jump him, he would not be able to protect his sister, even if he himself would somehow be able to survive.

He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

The three of them lingered a little longer. The dessandrites and the aquadites in particular were very interested in interrogating the Divine Mother for the information that she possessed on that Administrator and his civilization.

”Where is he from?” Lord Sheshank demanded to know. ”Tell us. Our civilizations and power blocs are more than powerful enough to dominate his civilization. We should be able to extract his secrets if we use pressure, but only if we know where his civilization is.”

The S’rrigin nodded with a grim expression. ”I fear that his victory may have led him to believe that he is on the same level as us in these negotiations. If we knew the location of this alien civilization, we would be able to exert pressure to secure better terms in this agreement for all of us.”

Divine Mother ooo—o-’s six eyes swept back and forth between the two leaders, growing hazy. She had to admit that the temptations that Rui dangled before her were so great that she momentarily considered using more unsavory means to get access to the miracles that he hid.

But she ultimately stayed true to her principle.

She believed that their civilization would be able to get their hands on the method of bypassing the price of the Verse eventually. At that time, she would have an advantage over these two, who didn’t know where human civilization was located.

Even though they knew it was somewhere within the Orion Star Strand, that didn’t narrow it down by any means. The Orion Star Strand has more than a billion stars in it. Even all of the major civilizations that occupied millions and millions of stars only occupied a fraction—less than half—of the entire star strand.

Because of how slow light and causality were, the speed of transmission of information across the star strand was very low, which meant that developments could take centuries, if not millennia, before advanced civilizations in the same strand would find out about it.

”I have no intention of betraying human civilization at this altar; I’m afraid the two of you can only stick to the agreement that we have made,” she told the two civilizations before departing from the conference.